


parentheses

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 04:29:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6141523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She knows he likes her black tank top very much. He knows she wants a shower very badly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	parentheses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Persiflage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflage/gifts).



As soon as she pushes the door to the shared bathroom close she lets out a small, tired sigh and starts massaging the back of her neck, stiff and full of knots. The hair is still crisp from her recent, summery haircut and it prickles her hand as Daisy presses her fingers into tense muscle. She does this for a few seconds before remembering she’s Inhuman - she lets her powers do the job, the soft vibrations working her flesh through a lot more effective.

It’s been a long day and it’s not even two in the afternoon. This is the first moment she’s had for herself and on a break since being rudely woken up at five. She can’t wait to get out of this stinky top and under warm water.

She enjoys prolonging that moment a bit longer yet, stands in the middle of the room with her eyes closed, kicking her boots off first.

She hears the door open and someone walk in.

She doesn’t need her powers to know who that is.

“Are you following me?” she asks, not turning around.

He stops a couple of steps behind her.

She can read his vibrations from here, warmer than the idea of a cleansing shower.

“I noticed you were itchy during the meeting and I’d figure you’d go straight for the shower,” he tells her.

“ _Itchy_ is a good way of putting it,” she says, throwing a look over her shoulder, whining a bit, because she can, with him. “I’ve been on the field since five a.m. and then the stupid briefing and I’m sorry to say but my suit still makes me sweat like a pig.”

She only gets a glimpse but Coulson is looking at her like she’s just said something charming.

“Very well,” he says, in his Directorial tone. “We’ll revisit the uniform specifications. Maybe come up with a summer version.”

He finally steps into her space and Daisy can feel his breath on the back of her skull even before he takes her in his hands and buries his face in the curve of her neck. Daisy presses back, easily yielding to the familiar touch she hasn’t felt in hours - and it’s not like that’s a problem (she’s not that needy), but it’s like she feels revitalized by it, Coulson kissing her now like he putting the risky, tiresome hours between their morning goodbye and this in parenthesis. It makes her more and less tired at the same time. It’s confusing. But a _good_ confusing. They have been together long enough that she takes comfort in these little details and familiarities and Coulson’s care and tenderness as he closes his lips over the tight knots in her muscles.

He runs his hands appreciatively down her sides, caressing her a bit roughly like he’s restraining himself.

“You’re a big fan of this black top, I know,” she teases him.

“You know me…”

“Yeah, and I noticed you were barely looking at me during the briefing.”

“I need to seem professional,” he replies, dragging his lips across the back of her neck. “If I had looked at you everybody would have noticed…” Another kiss, right on top of her shoulder. “Noticed that I wanted to walk up to you and take this gorgeous, gorgeous piece of clothing off you and-”

She bursts out laughing, interrupting his ridiculous tirade. Coulson is good when he is trying to sound sexy, but when he gets all fake-seductive and mocking like now is even better. Daisy feels this strange warmth in the stomach every time he makes her laugh, or even when he just _tries_ , and she’s not sure she’ll ever get used to it.

He starts laying softer kisses between her shoulderblades, taking his time and untangling her from herself, with patient. Daisy doesn’t feel like laughing anymore, and the warmth at the bottom of her belly transforms into something sharper, definitely familiar. It’s almost as good as the vibrations.

She turns around.

Coulson is smiling at her but he looks tired.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I know when I wake up at five in the morning _you_ wake up at five in the morning.”

He touches her hair. “I’m the Director. When any of my agents have to go out on a mission at five in the morning _I_ wake up too.”

“Any of your agents?” she tilts her head. “And here I thought I was your _special_ agent.”

Coulson chuckles - the professional tiredness in his eyes and the wrinkles around them when he smiles openly and privately like this make a weird combination but Daisy thinks that’s okay. They make a weird combination themselves.

“You’re special all right,” he mutters, like it’s a joke. Like it’s _not_ a joke. “Let me help you with this.”

He wraps his hands around her shoulders and grabs one of the tank straps and pushes it away as he bends to kiss the skin exposed underneath, very reverently. Daisy has had her fair share of lovers (though less than people would guess) but no one that had ever acted towards her like this. It’s not better or worse (she doesn’t want to compare, let’s say it’s better _for her_ ), it’s just Coulson.

He grabs the top by the hem, pulling it over Daisy’s eye as she offers the minimum assistance. She likes letting her exhaustion wash over her, becoming limp and pliable and letting Coulson take care of things. Even if it’s something so small as undressing her it’s nice to have someone who can take care of things for her. Just as easily he unbuttons her jeans and pulls them and her underwear low enough so she can wiggle out of them. The bra is the last to go and she always likes Coulson’s serious and awed stare whenever he sees her naked, even though he’s used to it by now.

“Wanna get in with me?” Daisy asks, softly.

And it is pretty much asking, which is something she is working on getting comfortable about. But while taking a shower sounds great and absolutely necessary, taking a shower with Coulson is an even nicer prospect. The city was only starting to blink into life, all that corners and truck deliveries, when Daisy and her team had to get a young Inhuman girl in control and away. Her parents had been hiding her during the days of the registration scare and hadn’t asked anyone for help. Daisy had been cranky already, not enough sleep, by the time the team arrived at the scene. Hours and a lot of paperwork later she is finally willing to let go of that ugly feeling inside her chest, the same one every time they encounter someone transformed thanks to the fish oil. Specially kids.

“Was it worse than you let on?” Coulson asks, reading her expression.

Daisy nods. He kisses the side of her head and begins to undress himself.

She doesn’t wait for him (she would normally love to watch the show, but she’s really anxious to wash the day off her skin today), gets into the shower and starts the water.

Daisy loves this bathroom, these showers for the agents. They’re barely three years old, as bathrooms were one of the things Coulson had to renovate when they took over The Playground, because the place hadn’t been in use for a decade or so. Daisy remembers all the problems with the pipes at first - absurd, because they had the latest tech in the lab, but they couldn’t really get the heating right for like months. She likes that the showers are spacious, not closed, not claustrophobic. She’s pretty sure Coulson picked the design himself (she doesn’t know much about what he did or thought or felt during those months, but it’s no use regretting that now, it seems like a million years ago and she is letting him make it up to her little by little, day by day), it seems like something he might have done.

She gets right under the water, letting it fall full force over the spot on her nape that bothers her the most. She takes deep breaths and looks down at her feet. She decides right there she’s taking the rest of the day off and do silly, small stuff just for herself, paint her nails (she’s thinking orange) and eat something that’s bad for her, play games alone in the common room for once.

If the world doesn’t go to hell for the second time today, that is.

It seems like a long time before he joins him inside. Daisy remembers being _tragically_ torn from the warmth of their bed in the middle of the night by an alarm in the comms. Both her and Coulson had groaned at the interruption, after only a couple of hours of sleep. And then she had to leave and then things had been crappy out there in the field and she thinks she missed him somehow - she always does, that’s her secret - and couldn’t really take a proper breath until she was back in the base and across him in the conference room, noticing his eyes darting over the straps of her tank top. The government liaisons (more like the government li- _assholes_ ) hadn’t even allowed her to change before they demanded their usual report on the new powered individual.

She closes her eyes as Coulson starts to touch her. It feels a bit clandestine, just knowing him by the touch - like when they started hooking up and it was still a big secret and they had to find breaks and private corners to see each other. She doesn’t miss that (this is better, specially when the team - and by that she means May, mostly - teases Coulson about it; but Daisy likes how the other treat them as a unit now, as partners who get to make decisions together) but the illusion of furtivity again is thrilling. 

“Water hot enough?” Coulson asks against her ear.

She moans in agreement. He knows she likes the water really really hot.

She likes the way the water seems to erase the trace of her fingers on her skin and it’s almost like she’s dreaming up a lover.

“I’m so tired I could just fall asleep right here,” she says, breaking the silence, leaning back against his chest.

“You could do that,” Coulson mutters, kissing her ear before leading her under the shower and getting some soap on her body. 

She sighs as he starts humming something. Coulson’s a hummer in the shower - she loves knowing this. He runs his hands over her stomach and breasts carefully, thumbing her ribcage in an intensely familiar way. He draws soothing circles down her belly. They don’t normally have this much time for a shower. Or ever. They need a holiday, Daisy decides, and starts daydreaming about driving Lola somewhere far and quiet. Cold, she’d like a cold place where they can just stay in with a million blankets wrapped around them ( _marshmallows_ she thinks, not sure why). And she knows these plans will probably not come to fruition, at least not soon, but she’s not afraid to make them, and that’s new.

She turns around, wanting to touch him. His scar feels like plastic under the hot water. He is blinking, trying to watch her as Daisy brushes her palm across his collarbone.

She grabs his left hand.

“The new model performing well under water?” she asks, threading her fingers with his, feeling the artificial but soft material of his new prosthetic.

“Seems to be,” Coulson replies, sounding only slightly unsure, squeezing her hand. 

“Good grip,” Daisy adds, guiding his hand to her hip, her ass.

Coulson grabs her like she wants and pulls her to him, kissing her with an open mouth and awaken desire. Daisy would tease him about this being his plan all along when he took the top off her, but she is too busy and distracting responding to his kisses with equal passion. He moves the both against the wall, dropping his left hand from her ass to between her legs. Daisy feels his dick get hard against her hip bit by bit, like a flower blooming or some lame and corny metaphor because she can’t think of something better right now.

“Hey, look who joined us,” she says, trying to sound playful. She’s bad at this, she admits.

“I told you,” Coulson says, licking her jaw. “I wake up when you wake up.”

She tries to arch her eyebrow like she always does but water gets in her eye. She chooses to pat his chest instead, his damp hair feeling thicker under her fingers than it usually does, the feeling of it under her hand arousing, shaking her out of her exhaustion with the solidity of it, his body.

“You’re very bad at this,” she tells him, because he is.

He looks like he doesn’t care, like it’s just the same as being good at it, maybe better.

When they have sex in the shower it’s normally from behind but for some reason today Coulson lifts her hips and holds her gaze as he enters her. He wants her to see his face and Daisy appreciates that, wrapping her arms around his neck tightly and keeping her eyes open as much as she can with the water splashing their faces.

They both moan as he slides in and out of her and Daisy is no longer surprised that this has become easy - not meaningless, just easy, like something she can take comfort in, and she never had that before Coulson (she never had many things before Coulson, and that’s not even about the sex, a lot of things that came way before the sex). Like, there are bad days, but mostly this is the one freaking thing in her life that doesn’t feel like she’s pushing a ton of rocks uphill every second of the day.

Her back tenses as the knotted muscles in her neck press against the cold tiles in the bathroom. Daisy loves the color, it’s very soothing and it makes her feel safe. Tiny pieces of home. 

Coulson holds her up when she is about to come, almost slipping out of her, and then he pushes her hard against the wall and it’s easy - easy to let go and the rest of it. Daisy wonders if that’s what makes it love, this, that’s it not really an effort. She doesn’t have to work to _feel_ it. She thought being in love meant you had to make an effort to feel it.

“Da-i-sy,” Coulson mouths slowly against her neck as he comes too, the trace of him between her legs gone under the hot water as well, in a moment. This time she feels a bit lonely for it, this kind of ghost touch.

He puts her down with the utmost care, even though she knows his arms must hurt (she’s not a light body, precisely) and pulls her against the water again. Daisy realizes her back and her hair had gone cold and this is so much better.

“This is what you had in mind when you were not-looking at my top during the whole meeting?” she asks.

Coulson takes a moment, pressing his palm against the wall for balance.

“Something like that,” he says, grinning. He looks about fifteen when he does that.

“Now I need _another_ shower,” she says, slapping his shoulder playfully.

“Yes,” he agrees, squeezing more shower gel on his palm.

“It’s a waste of soap,” Daisy complains as he lathers both their bodies again. She clicks her tongue. “The Director of SHIELD shouldn’t be so thoughtless with our resources.”

“You’re right. I should be more careful. I could cut down the wardrobe budget so you’d have nothing but the black tank top to wear.”

“A perv _and_ a tyrant,” she chuckles. “I think I love you.”

She pauses, because it’s not something that she’s ever told him this casually (or that often at all). Coulson gives her a curious, pleased glance but makes no comment, continues following the water falling on her body with his fingertips.

Funnily enough it’s when she is out of the shower and wrapped in a bathrobe (or more like, Coulson wrapped it on her) that she feels the most exhaustion. She is sitting next to Coulson on the wooden bench and suddenly she feels like she can’t move, that she will never be able to move a muscle again. She sways, pressing her body against his.

“I could fall asleep like this,” she says.

“Yeah, but we probably shouldn’t,” Coulson tells her, sighing regretfully. “We have to be in town in an hour.”

“Crap,” she mutters, realizing.

She had forgotten they had a meeting with the Army big shots. One of their monthly things so the Pentagon can make sure they are not arming Inhuman for a future uprising against the government who tried to put them all in cages not half a year ago.

“Okay, I’ll move, just…” she sighs. “Just one more minute,” she pleads with him, pulling at the lapel of his bathrobe.

Coulson lifts his arm over her head, wrapping it around her shoulders - Daisy’s neck, the knotted muscles full of tension, they fit well in the crook of his elbow - and running her hand through her damp, short hair.

“Maybe _two_ more minutes,” he replies, kissing the side of her head softly.


End file.
